This invention relates to wireless communication systems and, more particularly, to wireless communication systems that use techniques that compensate for interference between signals within the system.
Signals transmitted between base stations and mobile terminals within a wireless communication system interfere with one another to some extent, thereby negatively affecting the ability of the system to accurately receive and decode these signals. However, various techniques are known to compensate for such interference. These techniques include compensating for interference by adjusting a signal before it is transmitted to take into account some of the interference the signal will encounter after it is transmitted, and by determining the interference and subtracting this estimated interference from the particular signal after it has been received. Compensating for interference allows signals to be transmitted within the system at, for example, increased data rates and/or at lower powers, without increasing the error rates, thereby increasing the overall system throughput—the rate of communication traffic the system can handle at any given time.